Princess Dragomir
by MrsOzera
Summary: A crash, a blinding flash of light, fire and blood, the twisted metal of the car. Muffled sounds of pain, a groan, an arm handing limply out of the driver's seat [...] I was wrenched out of the nightmare in an instant, screaming, my bed a tangle of sheets as I thrash around for a few seconds, shaking violently Lissa's POV in 'Vampire Academy'


Chapter One

 _A crash, a blinding flash of light, fire and blood, the twisted metal of the car. Muffled sounds of pain, a groan, an arm handing limply out of the driver's seat. "Rose!" I scream until my ears deafen, until my lungs are raw and my voice breaks. I can barely breathe, I can barely even comprehend what is going on. This isn't real, I tell myself, clenching my eyes shut, this isn't real. I open them again, realizing that this is real, this is happening. My family is dying, Rose is dying. She's lying not more than three feet away and I scramble on my hands and knees over to her, cradling her head in my lap. She's not breathing anymore, her chests isn't rising. This isn't right. Tears fall down my cheeks, and I shake her. I will her to wake up. Wake up. Wake up. I'd do anything to have her wake up. Please God,_ please. _A light so bright. Stars dance across my eyes. A tingling in my fingers. I can't see anymore. Rose opens her eyes. I know that my family is dead. My mother, my father, my bro-_

I was wrenched out of the nightmare in an instant, screaming, my bed a tangle of sheets as I thrash around for a few seconds, shaking violently. I vaguely feel someone shaking me, urging me to wake up.

"Liss," I think it's Rose, but it was hard to hear past the ringing in my ears, "Liss wake up."

I felt her hand against my forehead and my screams dropped off into whimpers.

"Andre," I moaned. "Oh God." I felt her hand against my back as she pushed me up, urging me to sit.

"Liss, you aren't there anymore. Wake up." It's her voice, her presence that finally managed to pull me out of the past, and my eyes flickered open. Consciousness took over again, and I knew I was in control of my coherence once more. I took a few seconds to try and slow my frantic breathing, and rested my head against Rose's shoulder. She put an arm around me, slowly running a hand over my hair.

"It's okay," she told me gently, "everything's okay."

"I had that dream." Even saying the words hurt, and I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the memories to fade away.

"Yeah, I know."

Of course. Rose knew everything. We sat like that for a while, my head on her shoulder, her arms comforting me. I drew strength from her love and understanding, keeping the bad images at bay. Eventually, she leaned over to the nightstand table and turned on the dim lamp that illuminated the room in a soft glow. It wasn't very bright, but both mine and Rose's senses were more heightened than a mere human's that it was bright enough.

A meow sounded to our right and we turned as one, seeing Oscar, out housemate's cat jump up onto the window sill. I smiled a bit as he gave Rose a wide berth. No one really knew why, but animals didn't seem to be too fond of dhampirs. I was grateful that wasn't the case with us Moroi. I adored animals and wouldn't know what I would do if they acted the same way around me as they did around Rose. Oscar jumped onto our bed - padding a giant circle around where Rose was sitting - and rubbed his head against me as he purred softly. I looked down at him fondly and smiled as I scratched his chin, the last of my nightmare fading away. I wouldn't know what I would do without Rose. She had always been there for me in my darkest moments, when the nightmares came, when they left, and when they came back to haunt me again. She had been my anchor, the one to keep me sane when I felt out of control, and the one to keep us safe and hidden.

"When did we last do a feeding?" Her words jolted me out of my reverie. An extremely strange feeling came over me at her words. I always dreaded the moment she asked me this question. It was a mixture of anxiety and longing.

"It's been like...more than two days, hasn't it? Three? Why didn't you say anything?" Rose prompted. I shrugged and dropped my eyes from hers. As much as the idea of getting my blood was always tempting and I greatly yearned for it, I didn't like what it did to Rose. She was always weak from the blood loss, unnecessarily tired - I hated seeing her that way, it was so unlike her usual self.

"You were busy," I began with my usual excuse, as always, pointlessly hoping that she wouldn't notice the lie, "I didn't want to- "

"Screw that." She cut me off, fixing me with a fierce look, shifting herself closer to me. Oscar started at the sudden movement and returned back to his seat at the window. "Come on. Let's do this."

"Rose-" I started to say, but she managed to cut me off a second time.

"Come _on_. It'll make you feel better." She tilted her head sideways, tossing her long brown hair over her shoulder, baring her neck to me. I hesitated.

Rose seemed so willing to do this for me, and I always hated leaving her in such a vulnerable position, one she had trained so hard in her life to avoid. But there it was, the bloodlust. Not like the Strigoi, but strong enough to make me rethink her last words. It _would_ make me feel better, and sooner or later I'd have to feed if I wanted to stay healthy. Hunger and a desire to protect my best friend warred within me and eventually, my need for blood won out. I slightly opened my mouth, letting my fangs become exposed. Letting my true nature be seen. I made sure to be careful as my teeth neared her skin and quickly bit into her. Her yelp of pain was soon drowned out by pleasurable moans. The blood coursed into me, and I felt my energy begin to increase with every passing second.

The feeding didn't take very long and I eventually pulled back from her, wiping my mouth over my hand, studying the way she looked.

"You okay?" I asked her, concerned as always.

"I...yeah." Rose let herself sink back onto the bed, most likely dizzy from the blood loss. "I just need to sleep it off. I'm fine."

I was still worried about her, worried about what I made her go through for me, but I decided that there was nothing I could do for her now other than try and help her recover as fast as she could.

I stood up, "I'm going to get you something to eat." I could see she was ready to protest this and I made sure to quickly dash out of the door before she could say anything. As I was walking downstairs, I could already feel the difference the blood was working in me. My tiredness and lightheadedness was already fading and I felt more energized than I had in days.

Another, maybe even bigger reason why I hated feeding from Rose was the fact that for her, it was always an experience that went deeper than just giving me her blood. The chemicals in our Moroi saliva triggered an endorphin rush to humans or dhampirs when we fed from them. Willing humans who acted as donors to the Moroi community were called feeders and although they had always been looked down upon for what they did, it wasn't as bad as when a dhampir did something like it. For a dhampir to give blood to us was considered filthy, degrading and was strongly looked down upon by both the Moroi and dhampirs. It was a very uncommon thing in todays Moroi society for a dhampir and a Moroi to seriously engage in a relationship together, but flings did often enough spring up amongst us. There were very little Moroi women who dated dhampir men, but a lot of Moroi men liked playing around with dhampir women. Moroi men usually never ended up marrying a dhampir girl - it would be considred an extremely shameful thing - but the way dhampirs differentiated from us Moroi in form intrigued young Moroi men to 'try' something new. However, as it sometimes occurs, some women become pregnant, giving birth to dhampir children. Some of these women find the job of raising their child more important than becoming guardians, and they decide to live in segregated communes with other dhampirs in similar situations. If the rumors are true, sometimes Moroi men will pay the women in these communes a visit and the women will allow the men to engage in sexual activities in exchange for money and sometimes even let them drink their blood. A term that was widespread throughout vampire society labeled women like these: _blood whores._

Although what Rose and I did was nothing compared to anything like _that_ it was still something that was still best done in secret.

I never mentioned this to her anymore though, since the first time I tried she gave me a long lecture about the importance of my health. And we both knew we weren't going to find any willing feeders out there. Feeding off of Rose had become inevitable ever since we ran away from the Academy two years ago.

As I came downstairs, I saw that our housemate Jeremy was sitting at the table, a calculus book propped up in front of him. His eyes looked up when he saw me and a smile spread across his face. "Lissa, why you up so late?"

"Hungry." I explained nonchalantly, and began rummaging in our fridge for some leftover pizza, "You want something?"

Jeremy shook his head wistfully and indicated to the huge textbook. "Can't. Would be too distracting." He rolled his eyes in emphasis and sunk back down into his chair, eyes focused on the book.

I grinned at him, and went back to my search for food. Jeremy had an easy life. Good grades, girls and money were the only worries he ever had on a daily basis. No running away from the people you grew up with, no paranoia of getting caught. Always safe and extremely oblivious to the monsters that were roaming this world. Just living a happy human life. I missed having an easy life like that, but we had run away from them for a reason. _Rose_ had a reason, and I trusted her.

The sound of urgent footsteps startled me, and I looked up in surprise at Rose standing in the kitchen doorway.

"You shouldn't be up." The tension in her body was obvious. Something seemed off about her.

"We need to go. Now."

I stared at her for a few beats. That's when it hit me. She was fully dressed, holding both our coats and wallets in her hand, the usual signs that we were going to have to be on the run again.

"Are you...really? Are you sure?"

She nodded and an icy feeling began spreading in my stomach. Jeremy looked up at our voices, staring confusedly between us, "What's wrong?"

"Liss, get his car keys."

There were times when I would spend a few moments questioning whether Rose's ideas were ideal or well-thought out, and then there were times like these. I put my full faith in what Rose was asking me to do and unhesitatingly went over to where Jeremy was sitting.

I smiled broadly at him and gazed right into his eyes. At first, Jeremy just stared at me, slightly confused, and then my compulsion took control of him.

"We need to borrow your car." I said in my most soothing voice, "Where are your keys?"

It was easy, almost too easy. He was most definitely weaker to compulsion than others we had encountered had been. Ever since childhood, I was taught that using compulsion, a skill that most Moroi were able use at a bare minimum, was immoral and wrong. But whilst living out here on our own, it had become a necessity, a must to survive. I'm not sure whether it came with my continued practice or not, but I definitely seemed to have a higher control over it than the average Moroi did. I pushed the guilty thoughts out of my mind and focused my full attention and magic on Jeremy. He smiled back at me and reached into his pockets to hand me a set of keys dangling from a keychain.

"Thank you." I continued. "And where is it parked?"

"Down the street." Jeremy told me, dreamily. "At the corner. By Brown." I threw Rose a look and she nodded back, most likely calculating the distance from here.

"Thank you." I repeated and began backing away from him. "As soon as we leave, I want you to go back to studying. Forget you ever saw us tonight." Jeremy nodded obligingly.

"Come on." Rose said. "We've got to move." She grabbed me and we both ran outside together. We tried rushing, but it was hard work for Rose. Weak from the feeding, she kept stumbling and I had to catch hold of her a few times. _Oh God,_ I thought. Fear and anxiety pulsed into me.

"Rose..." I whispered over to her. "What are we going to do if they catch us?"

"They won't." Rose answered fiercely. "I won't let them."

"But if they've found us-" I began.

"They found us before. They didn't catch us then. We'll just drive over to the train station and go to L.A. They'll lose the trail."

Rose sounded so sure of herself that I felt my fear ebb away, trusting in Rose's plans and actions. I knew she'd keep me safe. She _always_ kept me safe. God only knew the crazy plans she had come up with in the past, but it always worked out in the-

"Did you hear that?" I flinched at the sudden noise. Footsteps, barely audible, however my sharp senses told me they were indeed there. And coming towards us. _Oh God,_ I thought again.

"We've got to run for it." Rose said, grabbing my arm. I looked at her - her hair was untidy and she looked utterly exhausted, frail. It was ironic how reversed our roles were at this moment.

"But you can't-"

" _Run._ " It was the way she put so much power into that one word that made me move. Rose clung to me as we both stumbled along. I heard the sounds of footsteps increasing, and I could tell they were getting closer to us. I could see Jeremy's Honda a few feet away from us, we were almost there. It was so close, so close-

And that's when a man stepped directly in front of us, blocking our only path to the car. Rose reacted immediately, jerking me back behind her. I glanced around her shoulder at him. He was quite tall, probably around six-seven, mid-twenties, with shoulder-length brown hair, tied back behind his neck. He wore a long brown duster, and his brown eyes sparkled with satisfaction at having caught us.

More footsteps sounded behind us, slowing down and eventually stopping. People closed in from the sides. Guardians everywhere. I could count about eleven of them, but who knew how many more were lurking within the shadows, hidden from sight?

Although guardians were usually supposed to make their Moroi feel comfortable, these put me on edge. They looked deadly, ready to strike at a moment's notice. And they were here for _us._ Not to protect, but to retrieve us.

Rose pressed me closer against her, angling me away from the man who appeared to be the biggest threat. He definitely seemed to be in charge of the guardians, an air of leadership about him that spoke legions.

"Leave her alone," Rose snarled at him, "Don't touch her."

The man held his hands up, probably in an attempt to make Rose understand he wasn't a threat to us.

"I'm not going to-" he began. That's when Rose jumped at him. Her attempt to subdue him would have probably been more impressive if she hadn't just given blood to me, or if she hadn't completely neglected her physical training in the past two years. This man was way to fast for her and even I could tell he was faster than even a regular guardian was. He reacted swiftly and slammed his hands into Rose before she even managed to make contact. She began falling back, but before she could even touch the ground, the man caught her arm, keeping her upright.

I noticed then that Rose's hair had fallen away from her neck, and the man was staring at the small puncture wounds I had made just earlier. Rose, noticing his look, reached up to touch the wound and quickly shook her hair forward again, her embarrassment plainly written on her face. Rose looked at him defiantly and wrenched her hand free from his grip. I knew Rose would have fought all of the guardians for as long as she could if it meant us keeping our freedom, but even I could see it was hopeless. I didn't want Rose getting herself hurt any more than she already had. _Maybe, maybe this is for the best,_ I told myself. I made up my mind and took hold of her hand, whispering, "Rose, don't." She battled with this for a few moments, and then I felt the tension leave her body.

The man, apparently seeing the surrender in Rose's eyes, stepped forward and gave me his full attention. He looked extremely calm as he swept me a formal bow.

"My name is Dimitri Belikov," I could hear a faint Russian accent interlaced with his words as he spoke, "I've come to take you back to St. Vladimir's Academy, Princess."


End file.
